Time to drag hose and start humping water to the baby trees! The roots of newly planted trees don't plunge very deeply so they quickly feel the effects of a dry spell. According to the MSU IPM site, we are dead-even for May rainfall and evaporative potential and the EP will pull ahead at 0.2" per day from now and for the next ten days.
To get maximum canopy growth through the summer, I don't want the trees to "set" terminal buds on their shoots until late August. If they feel water stress, they will stop growing earlier than that.
Noted for future reference: 8 ounces of urea per 100 gallons is about 300 PPM nitrogen.
used 5 gallon bucket with a 1/8 hole in the bottom works best.
ReplyDeletePut the hole near the edge of the bucket and put that near the tree.
Fill the bucket, It will drip slowly and feed the tree water over a long time.
We are easing into Summer in New Home 3.0 as well, ERJ. Starting to track how the water works in Summer for the future.
ReplyDeleteMake friends with someone at the local water bottle distributor. They get rid of those big 5-gal bottles on the regular that are no longer cosmetic. Fill, carry, invert, repeat. Get several and play leap-frog with them down the rows. Skip the gym that day, you get upper and lower body!
ReplyDeleteWe're five inches 'ahead' of predicted rainfall. Dunno what is going to happen this summer, but I just wish we'd get the 'soaking' rains rather than an inch in an hour.
ReplyDeleteSlacker! We're 13 inches above average. No hay cut or corn planted because field are too wet.
DeletePlant rice.
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